


Armistice Day

by enemyfrigate



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-05 23:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemyfrigate/pseuds/enemyfrigate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerald keeps vigil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Armistice Day

Gerald strokes Harriet's arm, careful not to wake her.

The war ended today. It's the 11th of November, 1918, and the war will not see another year.

Harriet has only a few days to live.

A poison has spread through her, and she is going to die. It seeped into her skin from an ordinary-looking document, a description of technical plans from some nameless world. There was some indication in the translation that the plans were meant as a sweetener in a peace treaty. A supposed peace treaty.

Gerald imagines he hears steps overhead, the susurrus of fabric on a living body moving in the corner. He takes his hand from Harriet's skin, and checks his stopwatch. It is just minutes before 8 p.m. Gerald thinks he should be reassured that his time sense functions as well as ever, but he is not a man to accept false comfort, most particularly from himself.

Will he be able to watch out Harriet's life with her? Gerald knows he may be pulled away at any moment. The war in Belgium and Turkey and Africa has ended, but Torchwood's war proceeds.

Gerald grasped quite quickly the nature of the conflict Torchwood finds itself at the center of when he joined the institute, fresh from a stint with the infantry out in Africa during the Boer war. He has seen war. He knows what it smells like. He knows how dirty it can get.

He feels only sorrow, not surprise, at Harriet's situation.

Harriet stirs and grasps at the bedside table for a pen that he has left lying there. She cannot sleep without pencil and paper to hand.

Gerald puts the pen into her fingers and she quiets, writing blind and slow against the rough wool blanket and linen sheets.

They are inkless equations, he thinks, these figures that Harriet's fingers make.

In her own mind, she is working, and Gerald smiles, because Harriet is her work. It is the cure to all problems in Harriet's measure, only Harriet does not admit of physical weakness. Her work does not encompass the body.

Soon, she will go to a better place, where a generation of ruined young men rest, away from bloodied beaches and rat-ridden trenches and destroyers torpedoed by U-boat.

Harriet will join the Creator, and she will forget her equations, and the machines that measure strange energy, and archives that open up small corners of the universe. She will forget pain, and sacrifice, and the way a friend looks with his guts torn from his belly.

She will no longer be part of the fight.

Her armistice day is at hand.

Harriet's hand stills, and the pen drops from her fingers. Gerald fears she is done, but her wrist is warm and her heart beats. He curls his fingers around her palm. He waits. He will watch out the night.

In the dawn, Harriet breathes slowly and then not at all.

Gerald kisses her lips for the last time, and straightens, banishing tears.

He stands to take up his duty. His team has covered any gaps for nearly 24 hours, and he must be needed.

But it cannot be so simple, and instead of turning to mount the stairs Gerald smoothes the sheets over Harriet's body, and arranges her pillows. He tells himself not to be foolish, as she must go into cold storage, but he lingers to lay her hands over her belly and stroke back her hair. She is still warm.

Gerald takes up the pen and puts it into his pocket, and finally turns to go above. His step is slow, but he is not weary.

Upstairs means taking reports, making assignments, answering the call of the King. Recruiting. Torchwood goes on. The universe still falls through the Rift in bits and bobs. They fight a continual war and Torchwood looks out across a vast, incomprehensible no man's land from a single trench, with no reinforcements coming.

When does he stop fighting? Gerald wonders. How does Torchwood go on with no end in sight?

There will be no treaty with a hostile universe. There will be no peace talks. He cannot expect even a Christmas truce. Damnation, he cannot even expect to know who he faces in battle.

There will be defense, solutions as necessary, outright fighting at times. They will struggle to keep up. No study or understanding. No reaching out and finding that infinitesimal shred of common ground Gerald is convinced lies between Earth and the alien universe. Not in his lifetime.

Perhaps Harkness will see it, Gerald thinks.

This is Torchwood's war. It must be fought, that one day it might end.

But Gerald walks into his office knowing he will no longer stand in the front ranks.

He sits down at his desk, takes out a sheet of Torchwood letterhead, and dips the pen in the inkwell. He presses the nib to the fine fibers of the blank sheet and writes a request for detached duty. He has knowledge Torchwood cannot do without, but he cannot soldier on. Without Harriet, he hasn't the spirit.

The war between Torchwood and the alien universe is over for Gerald Carter.


End file.
